


OC Description/Backstory: Serpentine

by APermanentResidentOfTheFriendzone



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-05
Updated: 2018-11-05
Packaged: 2019-08-19 03:46:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16526693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/APermanentResidentOfTheFriendzone/pseuds/APermanentResidentOfTheFriendzone
Summary: I’ve finally caved in and decided to start writing fan fiction, and I figured what better way to start than by making my OC known to the fan base? That probably doesn’t sound very common, but I feel the need to do this when a story that’s still in the skeleton phase within my mind that I want to put to paper, has a stronger emphasis on said OC. Not overshadowing per se, but enough that i think some prior knowledge about him would help you as a reader. You already know the other characters to death, so why not get to know this one, is what I’m trying to say. Nonetheless, let’s begin this OC explanation, and one last thing, this explanation is attempting to input him into canon, which you’ll find out soon enough.





	OC Description/Backstory: Serpentine

To begin with, I should probably explain what my interpretation of a serpentine is, due to the only canon mentions of serpentines being Bismuth giving a name drop upon first witnessing the Burning Room.

Physically, serpentines have a medium, slender build being slightly shorter than a pearl, with bright green making up the most of their outfits, and green hair that stops just above the ears. Serpentines are in a few ways similar to rubies in that they also harness pyrokinesis (if serpentines aren’t fire-based gems, I’m sorry in advance). As well as pyrokinesis like rubies, serpentines are also quite hotheaded and rowdy, and when they emerge from their points of incubation, they do so in a great burst of flame (The fire that serpentines create is blue). A serpentine also has slitted pupils, much like a serpent (see what I did there?).  
A serpentine, when angered, will often catch on fire, making him (yes, their male) stronger, faster, and an extreme danger to both ally and enemy, and like rubies, they are very hard to discipline.

Now to get more specific.  
Serpentine first emerged from the ground around 9,000 years before the events of the show take place, making him a very old gem. When he first emerged with his gem revealing to be on his midback, like all serpentines, he burst out in flame and proceeded to go on a rampage, melting most of the injectors in his kindergarten before he was stopped by none other than Yellow Diamond herself. Looking around at all the destruction he had caused single-handed, she seemed to take a liking to him. Training him into submission, she disciplined him enough that he became a natural leader to those around him, and she placed him as second-in-command of her army. At first, Serpentine only accepted the title and responsibility out of fear that she would punish or shatter him for denying it. But, as time went on, he grew to accept the responsibility he had for his soldiers and led them to the best of his ability. Over time he also grew to care about his troops and began to see them as a word he would only learn later on in his life: family. Protecting them and leading them through their many battles while colonizing planets became not only a responsibility to him, but a tenet. Sometimes having his brothers and sisters in arms beside him was the only thing keeping him going, and he was surprised at how easily his troops were willing to trust him with their lives. 

But around the time when Pink Diamond took her first colony of Earth, a rift had formed between Serpentine and the Diamonds. He had begun to notice that unlike him, they treated their gems as tools, nothing more than pieces on their chessboard in their quest for the infinite expansion of their empire, and he came to realize that they had been using him as well. But, he still obeyed, despite the rapidly shrinking amount of respect he had for his master, Yellow Diamond.

Once the rebellion broke out, rumours traveled quickly through the troops and Serpentine was eventually reporting to Yellow Diamond that the traitorous leader, Rose Quartz, was an absolute menace to her enemies with her lethal pink blade, and that the blade’s legend was striking fear into soldiers upon the sight of it. Yellow seemed to have an easy solution to that problem. If the rebel leader was going to scare her enemies with her weapon, then she would have Serpentine frighten his enemies with his weapon as well. But first, he would need a weapon. So, with no less than half a dozen bismuths working on it at the same time, Yellow Diamond constructed a nimble, curved blade (basically a Japanese katana) for him to use in battle. Although he accepted the weapon reluctantly, it would come to be his personal weapon of choice.

It was when Pink Diamond was ‘shattered’ that it all came crashing down. Enraged at the loss of their sister, the Diamonds sent all their forces to Earth in a gigantic assault with the order to shatter every last Crystal Gem on the planet, with Serpentine staying off-planet to provide instructions to his soldiers from a bird’s-eye-view. Eventually growing frustrated at the lack of success, the Diamonds settled to handle the matter themselves and combined their powers and, without giving their own troops time to evacuate, blasted the planet ‘obliterating’ every gem too slow to get off the surface. Serpentine could only watch in horror. The gems whom he had fought alongside for countless centuries, training and surviving and saving and winning with, had just been slaughtered like animals by the very people they looked to as leaders. It was with this event that Serpentine knew he could no longer serve his master. Denouncing her as he fled from her flagship in a fit of uncontrollable rage, he took a one-man spacecraft and attempted his escape, only for one of the craft’s boosters to be shot out, which led to him crashing his ship into an enormous asteroid which destabilized his form and left him in a catatonic state. Thinking him destroyed, the Diamonds returned to Homeworld, leaving Serpentine to drift in space for millennia.

Eventually Serpentine’s ship drifted into orbit around the Earth, and with time, his ship fell into the atmosphere and impacted in late Feudal Japan. The time would be around the year 1528. The impact finally brought Serpentine back from his catatonic state, and he found himself in the care of young Japanese shinobi named Shoujo (yes, I know what else that word can mean, stop laughing). While at first hostile and suspicious of an organic seeming to act peaceful with him, Shoujo eventually convinced Serpentine that he and the others in his clan meant him no harm. Knowing these people were friendly, and that the Crystal Gems weren’t anywhere near him, not to mention he had no way of getting off planet, he decided that his best course of action would be to stay with this clan of what he learned were classified as ‘humans’. During this time, he had very little to do other than think on what had happened happened leading up to his defection. These memories caused a great deal of anger within him, at one time causing him to catch on fire while Shoujo and the others were training. After forcefully calming him down (they cut him in half, knowing that it wouldn’t kill him), Shoujo told Serpentine that if he was going to stay here on the Earth, he needed to learn to truly discipline both his mind and body, and offered to train him to be a ninja. Serpentine didn’t want to accept the help at first, but he eventually accepted knowing the last thing he needed was to accidentally burn down the one place on this planet that was guaranteed to be safe. He was given harsh physical training in different styles of martial arts, and was given more specific training with his blade when Shoujo noticed the blade’s similarity to a katana. Serpentine always thought the thing was a bit too light to be effective, but when shown some better techniques it revealed it’s true potential as a lethal weapon. 

Something he had difficulty understanding when he was first introduced to it was the mental training he was given. Shoujo made him sit in a relaxed, cross-legged position and to close his eyes and to not do or think anything but listen to what was happening around him. He called this ‘meditation’. A technique used for to help calm the user and to help gather focus. With repeated attempts, Serpentine’s skepticism shrank further and further as he found himself less frustrated and more focused on his current task after using this technique. 

He also came to learn a great deal about the world around him. He learned about all the plants and animals, and how while these creatures didn’t serve any direct purpose, they each seemed to have their own place, and seeing them go about their daily lives just felt so natural, so right. It all became so beautiful to him. He learned things about human life, about things like eating, wow that one took a while to understand. And sleeping! Creatures going into a state of subconsciousness for hours at a time to regain energy! Serpentine had lived thousands of years and hadn’t needed to sleep for a second! It was all so new!

And with time, Serpentine did something that really surprised him: he began to see this planet as HOME. For the longest time, Serpentine had despised the Earth, although not for the reason that most gems do. The reason he had hated the Earth was because the planet was the instigator for the Diamond’s retaliation at the loss of Pink, the instigator of what caused the destruction of his precious soldiers. But after living on the planet and taking the time to stop and TRULY observe the world around him, he grew to love this place. It seemed somewhat offensive to his comrade’s memory at first, but at this point, he didn’t really care.

And so, his training continued for another 75 years until 1603. Serpentine had become an expert both with his blade and in unarmed combat. The amount of times he caught on fire had come down to next to nothing, he was a much more disciplined soft spoken person, and he had an extreme sense of focus. Shoujo, now an old man, had switched roles with him, and now Serpentine was the one taking care of him. Serpentine knew the old man was running out of things to teach him, but he didn’t point it out to him because he was frightened to leave this man who had helped him so much, gave him a new reason to live. But one day, the clan’s dojo was attacked by an enemy ninja clan, and in the midst of the battle, Shoujo was struck down.

He died in Serpentine’s arms.

But before he did, he gave his last lesson to Serpentine. He told him that he had spent many years teaching him to channel the burning rage that coursed through him, and to seek other solutions to conflicts than his fire. But he told him now, that there were times that discipline and control would not work, and that there were times where he would have to welcome the chaos, embrace it, and let the fire within him burn his enemies to ash. Then with choking cough that had him spitting blood. He passed.

Serpentine was not unfamiliar with the concept of death, he knew that all the inhabitants of this planet had much less time in life then he did. It shouldn’t have bothered him this much, should it? But it did, because he had just forever lost the closest friend he had on this planet. 

Catching on fire while still clutching his dead friend, Serpentine burned his old friend’s body, and finally let the rage that he had learned to control for so long out in full force, searing his enemies to their now blackened bones. 

The clan won the battle that day, and they would survive, but Serpentine knew he could no longer stay with them. It was time for him to leave, and to go out and find his own place in the world. As he was traveling, Serpentine came across a VERY large beast that was VERY determined to kill him. After running it through with his blade, it disappeared with a puff of smoke, revealing a gem. Serpentine was surprised at the sight of a gem from what seemed to be a large Earth predator. He had spent so much time around humans that he almost thought he himself was one, even partaking in some of their practices. But seeing another gem after so long, and in this condition, made him come to a realization. 

_Only one gem can do something like this_

The Diamonds, in their attempt at destroying the Crystal Gems, had instead turned them into feral monsters with nothing more than a desire to kill. 

That was the second time that day that Serpentine caught on fire. His hatred for the Diamonds growing ever stronger, Serpentine surprised himself with the thought that came to him next.

_No wonder gems started rebelling against you_

And with that, he knew. He knew what he was going to do. He was going to find the Crystal Gems, or whatever was left of them. And he was going to join them. He knew he was truly happy to live here on the Earth, and he knew that was the exact reason that the Crystal Gems even started rebelling in the first place. Their interests were aligned, and now that he saw this place as home, he wanted to share it with them. 

So, bubbling the gem, he set out around the world, going to every confirmed Crystal Gem base that he could remember from during the war, and as he searched, he realized something. Living on Earth where nobody knew who he was was a chance for him start over with a clean slate, but how would these gems react to meeting him when his blade would reveal his identity as Yellow Diamond’s second? The gem they had been fighting for their freedom against for decades? He had a feeling they wouldn’t exactly be welcoming him with open arms. But if they didn’t know who he was, perhaps he would be able to earn their trust. So, he hid the blade and it’s scabbard in his gem (pearls can do that, so I’m assuming all gems can do that), and set out once more.

Years later, after searching almost the entire planet, he found a small city on the coast of a peninsula on the continent of North America, and amongst the people there, there was one diamond in the rough. 

Rose Quartz.

You had to understand his disbelief. Here she was, the main target of the Diamond’s wrath millennia ago, and she was one of the gems unaffected by the blast? That shield must have been thicker than it looked. 

Discreetly following her (and unaware that he was being watched), Serpentine watched as she took an impressive leap over both a fence and moat, going around the cliff side and disappearing from sight. Not wanting to lose her, Serpentine ignored the ‘keep off beach- _please_ ’ sign and leapt over the fence and moat, only for a large, cackling, purple crocodile to leap out of the moat and latch onto him in mid-air, morphing into what looked a defective amethyst quartz. Upon landing he immediately threw the quartz to the ground, but before he could do anything else, another gem came up from behind him and shoved him down as well, placing a foot down on his chest, holding him there.

Looking up, he saw a tall gem, covered in shades of maroon and pink, her face partially concealed by a set of reflective eyeglasses. But what really stood out to him were the two separate gems on her palms. A ruby on the left, a sapphire on the right.

_A perma-fusion_

He spoke first.

“Please get off me, fusion.”

In hindsight, he probably shouldn’t have called her that, it only seemed to make her angry, but before she could say anything else, Rose Quartz came out from the cliffside along with a pearl who late claimed to be ownerless. Along with that and the fact that there was a permanent cross-gem fusion in the group, Serpentine knew this was going to take some getting used to. But it didn’t really matter to him, the time he had spent on Earth had taught him to tolerate things that other people said or did that his own opinions or beliefs disagreed with. After all, with all the terrible acts he had commited in his time serving Yellow Diamond, what gave him the right to judge?

After explaining why he was there, the gems seemed suspicious, because he’d told them enough that they knew he was previously a Homeworld loyalist, so what would be stopping him from, to put it one way, _maintaining his loyalty?_ But still, they allowed him to stay at ‘The Temple’ as they called it, and to become a Crystal Gem.

But as the year and missions went by, the suspicions the gems had about Serpentine began to fade, and he built a strong bond with each of them, to the point where Amethyst even gave him a pet name, affectionately calling him ‘Snake’. He refused the offers they had to fuse with them, though. When asked why, he admitted he had issues trusting them _that_ much, but he made the somewhat arrogant excuse claiming he could fight as well as any fusion. A statement he came to regret the first time he sparred with Sugilite.

And then Mr. Universe came to Beach City.

Rose said she simply wanted to see what that interesting sound was, and Serpentine was fine with that, and left her be to meditate. He never imagined that this particular human could bring about such change to the lives of the Crystal Gems. He’d seen the temporary romantic interest Rose had taken in humans before, but that was just it. They were _temporary_. When Rose announced to the rest of the gems that she was pregnant, and that she wouldn’t be able to exist with the baby, everything seemed to fall apart. The rest of the gems had gone into a panic, with it only getting worse the closer and closer the date of birth was growing. What were they going to do with their leader gone forever, being only left with her offspring? Serpentine was saddened at the idea of Rose leaving, but he knew that he wasn’t the one taking this the hardest. The other gems had spent their lives fighting alongside Rose, and the idea of being left to fend for themselves was a terrifying thought. He on the other hand, had spent much less time with them, and although he thought the world of these people, couldn’t even begin to understand the pain they were going through. When the baby finally came and was subsequently named Steven, Garnet’s Future Vision told her that they would one day take the boy into their care. Serpentine was intrigued at the idea of assisting in the raising of the half-gem. Being able to pass on the wisdom he had gained in his life was certainly an attractive factor. As the boy grew, Serpentine began to realize how truly special Steven was. Special enough that Serpentine found himself learning things from Steven sometimes. And if that boy could teach _him_ anything, who else could he change?

 

Okay, done with the history, now I’ll explain a few things. 

Serpentine eventually reveals his blade, as well as his identity as Yellow Diamond’s former second, to Steven and the gems. This would probably be about halfway through the first season. I know that would have Steven learning about the Diamonds earlier than he normally does, but I’m already severely out of canon, so that’s a minor offence at this point.

When Serpentine meets Bismuth and she takes the gems to the Forge, she upgrades Serpentine’s blade by hollowing out a thin layer of the metal, and coating the insides with a highly flammable substance, allowing Serpentine to set the blade on fire, dealing devastating damage.

Serpentine doesn’t have his own room in the Temple, so he stays and meditates atop the statue’s head each night (and saves me the trouble of having to design a room for him, * _rubs hands together in that way evil geniuses do_ *)

Due to him spending so much time in Japan, Serpentine knows how to speak Japanese.

The musical instrument Serpentine can play is the piano, and he even assisted in teaching Steven how to play it.

**Author's Note:**

> Now you know all that I’ve fleshed out for Serpentine, although if I do think of any more things add to him I’ll just update this. Do you like him? Let me know if you do! Or don’t, I’m not only doing this for attention. Speaking of which, if by some miracle anybody likes my OC enough to wish to use him, go right ahead. Seeing MY character in SOMEONE ELSE’S work makes me feel like I did a good job at character-building. My only rule for this is, just let people know that I’m the one who created him. Other than that, go right ahead if you’re crazy enough. Thanks for taking time out of your day to read this. Goodbye!


End file.
